What day is the Cold Food Festival?

The Cold Food Festival is April 4, 2023.

Cold Food Festival, a traditional Chinese festival, is celebrated on the 105th day after the winter solstice in the summer calendar, one or two days before the Qingming Festival. It is the day when the festival was first celebrated, fireworks were banned and only cold food was eaten. And in the development of later generations gradually increased the cleaning, trekking, swing, cuju, pulling hooks, cockfighting and other customs, cold food festival stretched before and after more than two thousand years.

Once known as the first major festival of Chinese folklore, the Cold Food Festival is the only one of the traditional Han festivals to be named after a food custom. Before Tang Ruowang's calendar was changed in the early Qing Dynasty, the Qingming Festival was set two days after the Cold Food Festival. After Tang's change, the Cold Food Festival was set one day before the Qingming Festival. In modern times, the twenty-four solar terms are based on Tang's calendar, so the Cold Food Festival falls one day before the Qingming Festival.

Records

The earliest record of the origin of the Cold Food Festival, which is attributed to the burning of Jie Zi Tui on Mianshan Mountain in Jiexiu, can be found in the Western Han Dynasty in Huan Tan's "New Treatise - Volume Eleven - Leaving Matters". Later, it was published in Houhanshu - County and State Zhi - Taiyuan County, Houhanshu - Zhouju Biography, Cao Cao's "Order of Punishment", Jinshu - Shi Le Biography, Li Daoyuan's "Shui Jingji - Fen Shui", the Northern Wei Dynasty's "The Essentials of Qimin - Cooking Liling and Cheese", the Southern Song Dynasty's Zhou Mi's "Miscellany of Kexin", and the Yuan dynasty's Chen Yuanliang's "The Year of the Year and the Time of the Year", among other canonical books.

Historically, the two festivals were close to each other, and over time, they were combined into one festival.

In history, the two festivals were close to each other, and over time they were combined into a single festival. Dali thirteen years on February 15 edict: from now on, cold food through the Qingming, leave five days. To Zhenyuan six years on March 9 edict: cold food Qingming, it is appropriate to the Yuan Day Festival, before and after the three days", therefore, "Chinese traditional culture", "roughly to the Tang Dynasty, Cold Food Festival and the Qingming Festival into one".

Reference: Baidu Encyclopedia - Cold Food Festival